


Bathed

by twofrontteethstillcrooked



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt-comfort if you squint, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-shark date au, snippetfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-11-02 09:03:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20693408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/pseuds/twofrontteethstillcrooked
Summary: An itch had caused him to reach back to scratch. His fingers came away red as the pain shot like cannon fire across his shoulder.Silver went pale as he rushed nearer. “You told me you weren’t injured.”Flint shrugged. “I didn’t think I was.”Silver seemed to be clenching his teeth hard enough to crack rock. His nostrils flared. “We should see to it before you head much further inland.” He sounded like someone Flint did not want to test on the matter.





	Bathed

**Author's Note:**

> Splits off from canon after 3x03.
> 
> ~
> 
> Smut with feels. Just 'cause.

~

He hadn’t felt it at the time. A common occurrence, to be struck and note nothing of it until much later, the villain long felled and possibly by someone else entirely. Flint had helped row to shore after the clash, his arms protesting, a cacophony to drown out all other moaning signals from his body. On the beach he found the strength to stay upright, his knees slightly weaker than appreciated; neither he or nor the rest of the crew had been on land for longer than half a day in several weeks. The longboats and men were unpacked in usual haphazard fashion, while small spies darted around and through the tired crew like minnows before running back towards the brothel, with news to tell their mistress. 

An itch had caused him to reach back to scratch. His fingers came away red as the pain shot like cannon fire across his shoulder.

Silver went pale as he rushed nearer. “You told me you weren’t injured.” 

Flint shrugged. “I didn’t think I was.” 

Silver seemed to be clenching his teeth hard enough to crack rock. His nostrils flared. “We should see to it before you head much further inland.” He sounded like someone Flint did not want to test on the matter. 

Which was how, an hour later, Flint found himself in an iron tub in the brothel while Silver banged around the room. He’d thrown open a window to let in a breeze and found the breeze too punishing, slamming the shutter closed. He'd practically torn the clothes from Flint. Flint felt Silver had, for a second, considered picking him up, slinging him over his shoulder, and forcibly tossing him into the tub. (It would’ve been a sight. Flint was almost sorry to have missed it.) Silver took two additional buckets of water, a stack of towels and washcloths, and a bowl of soap from a whore named Beatrice, who was wise enough not to comment, and locked the door after her. And he tried to kneel by the tub, but the height and the angle were completely wrong for his bad leg, so he was dragging a derelict chair over with as much hostility as it could endure. 

Flint kept soaking, silently.

Silver flung a washcloth with a wad of soap on it at his head. “You’re responsible for the front side.”

“Fine.” Flint dipped the cloth into the lukewarm water and began to scrub his arms. The gooey tan soap began to foam lightly and give off the slightest whiff of hog. “This the only soap they had?”

“I told Max not to bother with anything nicer,” Silver said, dipping his own washcloth in the water and spattering Flint in the process, “because you were just going to turn the whole affair into shitting bilge water anyway.” He began to wash Flint’s back as though he wished to slough off skin and muscle, right down to bone. 

“_Ow._ Could you--”

“No,” Silver said. “You’re filthy like you were wrestling in mud, for fuck’s sake.”

“Like you’re so much cleaner.”

Silver chuffed, meanly. “First, _I_ fell in the fucking ocean. Second, _I_ didn’t nearly die, for the hundredth time, at the end of an enemy blade. Third, _I_ didn’t lie to my quartermaster’s face about being wounded.” 

“Now you’re judgemental of liars.” Flint let the washcloth float while he cupped water in his hands and rinsed a bit, feeling more keenly the various bruises and scratches he’d received in the fracas earlier. The water was in fact turning a morbid shade of gray. “You smell like you fell in the ocean.”

Silver scrubbed harder, like he could expose Flint’s spine to open air in the process. “I’ll clean up after we’re finished with you.” 

Flint could only guess at the origins of the banked fury in Silver’s tone. He spoke next as plainly as he could, for all that he was being flayed. “I assume it’s not too deep a cut.”

Silver dipped his washcloth in the water and wrung it out. “It’s not.” 

He put his left hand on the back of Flint’s neck, as if to hold him still, and began to clean the wound. Flint inhaled sharply, leaned forward, and gritted his way through the onslaught, painful not because Silver was rough but because long after the assault it fucking hurt being hit, and having that wound cleaned, even gently, somehow hurt fucking worse, which both of them knew full well without Flint mentioning it.

He thought of Miranda suddenly, of her small, elegant hands -- turned more callused from gardening -- applying a salve to any of a series of bloody wounds he had brought home over the years. Their house, miles away, was empty as far as he knew. He wished to go to it immediately and also never to return; he thought he might go truly mad if he stepped inside and smelled her perfume; or worse, if nothing of her scent lingered there. Had he ever taken care of her in injury or illness? He couldn't remember such a time. 

Rust swirled through the water. Flint waited until the pressure around his throat eased. “How’s it look?”

The only response Silver gave was one of water sluicing down Flint’s back. 

Flint twisted in the tub, which pulled on the wound, and he strove to keep a hiss silent. When he looked up Silver was watching him with wariness and dark circles beneath his eyes in his still-too-thin face, as though equally ready to punch Flint or fall dead asleep. 

“Let’s get you cleaned up before you pass out,” Flint said, starting to stand.

“I’m not sitting in that nasty water. There’re two clean buckets full; I’ll use those.” Silver took up his crutch and was across the room before Flint could protest. 

When Flint was out of the tub a towel flew at him. He caught it and wrap-tucked it around his waist. Bath water, even that as grim as what he had climbed out of, was still one of the cleaner fluids to land on the floor of this particular establishment; on wet feet he padded over to Silver. 

Silver was staring at himself in a long looking glass as if the speckled reflection he saw there disturbed him beyond words. Flint hooked his chin over Silver’s shoulder for a moment, until Silver met his eyes. 

I should apologize, Flint thought, though he wasn’t entirely sure what for.

He moved away to fetch a bucket of water and another washcloth. When he’d brought both to the bed and wetted the cloth, he sat on the edge of the mattress and caught Silver’s wrist, tugging until Silver came closer and could be corralled into his lap. 

It wasn’t petulance on Silver’s face, nor anger in his posture: it was, Flint saw, a kind of resignation warring with whatever else Silver was thinking. Frustration. Exhaustion. Physical pain? Sweat shone at the base of his throat and his curls and clothes were somewhat crunchy with salt. He did smell like the sea; Flint wanted to bury his face in that scent.

The bulk of Silver -- such as it was, with his collarbone sharp and his diminished weight on Flint’s leg more than manageable -- in his arms felt terribly correct. Flint took up the washcloth and wiped down Silver’s forearms and hands and down the skin of Silver’s chest where his ridiculous shirt exposed more than it revealed. He pulled free said ridiculous shirt from the waistband of Silver’s trousers and wiped the cloth up his back, feeling him shiver.

Silver was almost smiling. “Would you like me to just take off my shirt?”

“Yes,” Flint said with some exasperation. “And everything else.” 

Silver stood awkwardly in the V of Flint's legs, one hand braced on Flint's less compromised shoulder and the other unbuttoning his trousers. Flint rucked up his shirt and Silver paused long enough to raise his arms one at a time while Flint got the shirt off; he resumed divesting the trousers with a little caged hop and a lean until he was quite naked and pulling Flint's towel loose. 

Flint kissed him to steady himself first and Silver second, and ahh, there then: Silver kissed back as if to start an insurrection. Flint couldn't decide which of them was the prince to be deposed and which the dragon full of teeth circling the spring, and his tired mind wasn't fond of the analogy either way. He put his hands around Silver's head and made himself gentle.

"I wasn't lying, before," Flint said. "I hadn't realized someone had struck me."

Silver pulled back, frowning. "Your condescending--"

"I'm not coddling you," Flint interrupted, sliding his hands to Silver's slim waist. "Nor trying to distract you."

Silver's eyes blazed. Then: he swallowed.

Flint had never known someone so capable of direct eye contact that itself hid as much as any other man's glancing away would have. Or a man whose stated truths were as undeniable yet incomplete. It had not been many weeks since one boundary between them had been crossed, and to be fair it had been ages since Flint had found himself partaking of such intimacies with anyone but Miranda -- and with Miranda, there had been other boundaries built. To Flint's everlasting shame he had seen the need to tear them down far too belatedly.

_Forgive me. Both of you._

The first time Silver kissed him Flint had consented to it the way a starving man takes any stale bread crust, any coil of apple peel. Flint had pondered that his lack of self-discipline would one day leave him exposed, possibly even dethroned. In taking Silver to bed he'd discovered a delectation he was, to date, too weak to resist. In the dim light of the brothel bedroom he wondered at the feast he had stumbled upon again, Silver's eyes wary but his huge hands restless along Flint's neck, thumbs stroking his jaw as if he could not help but to do so. What secrets were laid alongside Silver's boldness, Flint could only guess at: sorrow, perhaps; an ache in his leg he could not entirely ensconce; lingering fear.

"Where are you?" Silver murmured, his fingers rubbing up the back of Flint's head. He exhaled as Flint dipped his head to taste his breastbone.

When Flint looked up Silver's expression had changed, heavy and hungering, perched upon shallow breaths. Silver did not fear _him_ anymore, or at least not more than he despaired of what they had recently survived. Perhaps Silver watched him like he expected him to disappear; this was the sort of concern Flint could not entirely alleviate. But he could stoke something else within Silver instead, and accept what Silver seemed willing to offer.

Flint let go of him to take up the washcloth, dip it in the bucket, and wipe it dripping along Silver's hip and further down his leg, then repeat with the other leg, to the crooked edge of it, anyway, then repeat with Silver's arms, up and under, his torso, his shoulder blades, his collarbone and throat and warm back of his neck beneath tangled curls. A fair amount of water splashed on Flint in the process. A pool spread at Silver's foot and began to puddle under the bed. Silver kept his hands light on Flint's shoulders and balanced neatly while he leaned on Flint's thigh. Flint wiped a last sopping line down Silver's stomach, feeling the muscles jump, and let the washcloth slide away to the floor as he took up the hard length of Silver's lovely cock in his hand.

Silver closed the distance between his mouth and Flint's. Flint heard himself make a noise of animal pleasure, echoed in the way Silver canted his hips as Flint stroked him.

"I want to suck you off," Silver said in a guttural whisper between kisses, "and make you spend in my mouth."

"Willful," Flint chided, low and teasing, "and perverse." Silver had scrabbled his right hand around Flint's cock and started to jack him slowly but expertly, making it more difficult for Flint to say, without a change in tone, "I should not allow you such liberties when you have been so ill-mannered this evening." 

Silver ignored this to offer, "If there was oil to be had, you could take your own liberties instead."

"Or you could fuck me," Flint said, without his mind as much as glancing in the direction of more appropriate discretion. 

The absence of malice in the small smile Silver gave him seemed answer enough.

They found a glass vial in a wooden box on the grubby vanity beside the bed.

"It would be easier for you if you were on your stomach," Silver said in a hush, his thick fingers already glistening. 

Flint was laid back on the sheets, his wounded shoulder burning like it could scorch a hole in the linen, the rest of his body aching for contact. He needed to banish the hesitation creeping into Silver's expression. He spread his legs and watched Silver, stretched out alongside him, take a long breath, gaze gone black with desire. Greedily, Flint said, "I want to see your face."

Nevertheless, he closed his eyes for a minute as Silver worked in one finger and another. Flint opened his eyes to reach for the vial, to pour out a measure and wrap his oiled palm around Silver's cock. Silver eased himself between his legs as Flint hooked his ankles together behind Silver's back. Watching as Silver entered him, the effort passing over Silver's features while he tried to conceal his pleasure was almost as breathtaking as Flint's own. Silver bit his lip and ducked his face to Flint's throat with a muffled groan as he began to move; Flint pulled him up for a kiss and grinned at the way Silver kissed back, all pretense of control quickly being abandoned as they rocked together.

Flint burnished the skin he found beneath his palms, thrilling in the ways he could make Silver gasp. He reached down to cup Silver's ass in his hands and change the cadence of their coupling, make it just a little rougher, Silver filling him just a little deeper, both of them desperate to last a few minutes longer with Flint's cock raking against Silver's stomach.

"Oh, god," Silver panted out with increasing helplessness, "I'm going to-- I'm going--"

Flint managed to whisper, "It's all right, I've got you," and Silver kissed him so hard Flint tasted blood as Silver spilt deep within him.

Somehow Silver managed to not collapse, but found Flint's cock with his fist and stripped it no more than a half dozen times before Flint was coming, haze blurring the edges of his vision as he struggled to keep quiet. Silver breathed a laugh as he kissed Flint more gently and ran his hand flat through the mess on Flint's belly and chest. Then he plunked onto the mattress beside Flint, as inelegant as when he'd flopped off the _Walrus_ directly into the bay all those months ago to escape Flint's murderous pursuit. Flint turned to kiss him, touching his throat decidedly without a knife in his grip. 

Silver seemed content to stay instead of fleeing. He wore a peculiar countenance.

"What?" Flint asked.

Silver sighed. "You need another bath."

Flint snorted.

"I'm glad you weren't hurt worse." Silver looked away, as if it were the fucking and not the armed conflict that had caused the injury.

Flint took his hand, brought the knuckles to his mouth. His shoulder bristled but would heal. He wanted to live; it was the strangest realisation. I'm here, he wanted to tell Silver. I'm not going anywhere. His bed at the house was more comfortable. Perhaps it would be easier to return to it if… 

He said nothing. Silver watched him with soft eyes, brushed his thumb over Flint's cheekbone, and kept the rest of his own secrets.

~


End file.
